British 11th Armored Division

The British 11th Armored Division was an armored division of the British Army that was active from 1941 to 1946 and from 1952 to 1956. The division was created during World War II, and its first action occurred during Operation Overlord, the 1944 invasion of Normandy. The division took part in the Battle of Caen before taking part in the Falaise Gap campaign, and it took part in the push from Paris to the Rhine from 25 August to December 1944, liberating the French city of Amiens on 1 September 1944 (and capturing General Heinrich Eberbach on the same day), liberating Antwerp, Belgium on 4 September, clearing the land between the Albert Canal and the Maas from 6 to 12 September 1944, and taking part in the liberation of the Netherlands. During Operation Market Garden, the 11th Armored Division linked up with the US 101st Airborne Division at Nuenen, established a bridgehead over the Willemsvaart Canal on 22 September, and forced the Germans to withdraw from Helmond on 25 September.

At the beginning of October 1944, the division was tasked with eliminating the remaining pockets of German resistance remaining west of the Maas, and it was stopped at the Deurne canal by obstinate German resistance. The clearing of the Maas took several weeks, and the division suffered heavy losses during the capture of the Broekhuizen fortress from German fallschirmjaegers from 30 November to 5 December 1944. The 11th Armored also fought at the Battle of Dinant, destroying several 2nd Panzer Division tanks east of Dinant on 24 December. In February 1945, it took part in Operation Veritable in the Lower Rhine area, suffering from the highest exhaustion rates of any Commonwealth forces involved. From 26 to 28 February, the division attacked Gochfortzberg in order to break the Schlieffen Line and capture Sonsbeck, thereby assisting the II Canadian Corps in taking Hochwald during Operation Blockbuster. Gochfortzberg was seized on 28 February and Sonsbeck on 3 March 1945.

The 11th Armored crossed the Rhine at Wesel on 28 March 1945 and faced sporadic pockets of resistance as it reached Gescher on 30 March. On 1 April 1945, after crossing the Dortmund-Ems Canal, the 11th Armored was heavily engaged on the heights of the Teutoberger Wald, taking Brochterbeck and Tecklenburg after heavy losses. Divisional units continued towards the Osnabruck Canal, liberating the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. On 18 April, the division reached the Elbe near Lueneburg, and it launched its last attack on 30 April 1945, crossing the Elbe at Artlenburg and taking Lubeck on 2 May and Neustadt on 3 May. The division captured 80,000 German troops and 27 generals while patrolling the surrounding countryside, and it occupied the Schleswig-Holstein area after the war's end. On 23 May, the division captured members of Karl Doenitz's government in Flensburg, and it was disbanded in January 1946. The division had lost 2,000 dead and 8,000 wounded or missing, and Miles Dempsey later stated that he had never met a better division, as it always had a sound and well-trained nucleus to fall back on despite suffering the most casualties of any British Second Army division. From 1952 to 1956, it was briefly reactivated, and it was converted into the British 4th Infantry Division.